The Transformation of African Christianity PDF Download

Author: Sunday Jide Komolafe
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781907713606
Category : Church growth
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Author: Toyin Falola
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 704

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Book Description
Christianity and Social Change in Africa is the most comprehensive look at the African encounter with Christianity in recent years. The book's themes are drawn from the pioneering work of J.D.Y. Peel, building on his creative explanation of the African experience of Christianity. The volume covers a broad range of themes, including religious expansion, the rise of Pentecostalism, and the use of new media and technologies to convert people and reform believers. The various manifestations of religious impact run through all the chapters, covering aspects of culture, politics, the economy, and the landscape. The volume also explores the success of Africans in exporting Christianity to other parts of the globe, a phenomenon that has redefined both the message and meaning of this religion. The contributors are a distinguished roster of scholars who draw on years of experience and research to present remarkable ideas and original interpretations of the forces Christianity exerts in Africa. The essays reflect the importance of comparative historical inquiry, inter-disciplinary perspectives, Peel's contributions to the transformation of history and sociology, and the paths that a new generation of scholars must chart to comprehend the power of African Christianity. "For all interested in the processes and power relations of cultural (self)representation and (self)determination in the African context, this book is essential." -- The International Journal of African Historical Studies "The chapters are well written, persuasive and well structured. The book is a useful tool for the study of social transformation and cultural persistence in African, diaspora and cultural studies." -- Journal of African History "This is an important book for scholars of Nigeria and the Yoruba world, but also for those interested in the ongoing question of religious change in Africa and the diaspora. Indeed, some of the individual essays have the potential to become classics... This book is a fitting salute to the legacy of John Peel." -- African Studies Review "At a time when Christianity in Africa is experiencing a great leap forward, Christianity and Social Change in Africa facilitates an exploration of some of the themes more critical to this development... The book signals interesting directions for future research and should be welcomed by anyone interested in the still unfolding landscape that is Christianity in Africa." -- Pneuma

Author: Anthony Grafton
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674037863
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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When early Christians began to study the Bible, and to write their own history and that of the Jews whom they claimed to supersede, they used scholarly methods invented by the librarians and literary critics of Hellenistic Alexandria. But Origen and Eusebius, two scholars of late Roman Caesarea, did far more. Both produced new kinds of books, in which parallel columns made possible critical comparisons previously unenvisioned, whether between biblical texts or between national histories. Eusebius went even farther, creating new research tools, new forms of history and polemic, and a new kind of library to support both research and book production. Christianity and the Transformation of the Book combines broad-gauged synthesis and close textual analysis to reconstruct the kinds of books and the ways of organizing scholarly inquiry and collaboration among the Christians of Caesarea, on the coast of Roman Palestine. The book explores the dialectical relationship between intellectual history and the history of the book, even as it expands our understanding of early Christian scholarship. Christianity and the Transformation of the Book attends to the social, religious, intellectual, and institutional contexts within which Origen and Eusebius worked, as well as the details of their scholarly practices--practices that, the authors argue, continued to define major sectors of Christian learning for almost two millennia and are, in many ways, still with us today.,

Author: Sunday Babajide Komolafe
Publisher: Langham Monographs
ISBN: 9781839731235
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 474

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This book seeks to engage in a systematic ecclesiological reflection on the extent to which the understanding and practice of "church" have changed during one and half centuries of Christianity in Nigeria with the purpose of providing pastors and practitioners with an interpretive framework for a contextual yet a biblical way of doing church as Nigeria moves into the future. It is also to provide the theorist with a missiological and theological compass to guide the work of theorizi

Author: Robert J. Houle
Publisher: Lehigh University Press
ISBN: 1611460824
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 355

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Book Description
Making African Christianity argues that Africans successfully naturalized Christianity. It examines the long history of the faith among colonial Zulu Christians (known as amaKholwa) in what would become South Africa. As it has become clear that Africans are not discarding Christianity, a number of scholars have taken up the challenge of understanding why this is the case and how we got to this point. While functionalist arguments have their place, this book argues that we need to understand what is imbedded within the faith that many find so appealing. Houle argues that other aspects of the faith also needed to be 'translated,'particularly the theology of Christianity. For Zulu, the religion would never be a good fit unless converts could fill critical gaps such as how Christianity could account for the active and everyday presence of the amadhlozi ancestral spirits - a problem that was true for African converts across the continent in slightly different ways. Accomplishing this translation took years and a number of false-starts. Coming to this understanding is one of the particularly important contributions of this work, for like Benedict Anderson's 'Imagined Communities,' the early African Christian communities were entirely constructed ones. Here was a group struggling to understand what it meant to be both African and Christian. For much of their history this dual identity was difficult to reconcile, but through constant struggle to do so they transformed both themselves and their adopted faith. This manuscript goes far in filling a critical gap in how we have gotten to this point and will be welcomed by African historians, those interested in the history of colonialism, missions, southern African, and in particular Christianity.

Author: Jehu Hanciles
Publisher: Orbis Books
ISBN: 1608331032
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 824

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Book Description
Hanciles does yeoman work in part one synthesizing studies on the impact of globalization, revealing that its outcomes will likely not be determined by the Euro-American heartlands that sparked this movement. Instead, in parts two he shows that migration in general is having an enormous effect on shaping a new world order, and in part three, "Mobile Faith," he advances the case for the migration of Christians as carrying within it the seeds of renewal for the whole church and also the potential to reshape church-state and religion and culture relations globally.

Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004412255
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
Faith in African Lived Christianity – Bridging Anthropological and Theological Perspectives offers a comprehensive, empirically rich and interdisciplinary approach to the study of faith in African Christianity. The book brings together anthropology and theology in the study of how faith and religious experiences shape the understanding of social life in Africa. The volume is a collection of chapters by prominent Africanist theologians, anthropologists and social scientists, who take people’s faith as their starting point and analyze it in a contextually sensitive way. It covers discussions of positionality in the study of African Christianity, interdisciplinary methods and approaches and a number of case studies on political, social and ecological aspects of African Christian spirituality.

Author: Caleb Oluremi Oladipo
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9780820463896
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
One of the most important developments of Christianity in the twentieth century was its transformation in South Africa, where it became a vibrant religion rooted in African idioms and cultures. The church also became engaged in the struggle against social and political injustice, and church leaders employed the vocabularies of faith to secure civil liberty. This hard-hitting book focuses on post-apartheid Christian character and establishes the theological and spiritual authority of African Christians, calling contemporary Christians to renew their faith and Christian identity. It shows, too, that one cannot seriously consider contemporary Christianity apart from the African experience.

Author: Richard Gray
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300102130
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 152

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In this book, one of the world's leading scholars on the history of religion in Africa shows how Christianity has been transformed as it has been adopted by black Africans, from the introduction of Christianity in the seventeenth century to the present. Richard Gray finds that Africans have not meekly accepted monolithic Western practices and interpretations but have appropriated Christian faith for specific needs and added to it insights of their own. "Gray's theological conclusions are fascinating, and the book forms a useful contribution to the study of missions in Africa."-Eugeniah Adoyo, Theological Book Review "Gray's most significant contribution is his essay that compares differing concepts of evil in the cosmologies of Christianity and traditional African religions. This compact, well-written volume has extensive footnotes. It is recommended for specialists, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates."-Choice "A thoughtful and informative book, well worth reading."-Joseph C. McKenna, Theological Studies "Concrete and detailed cases support Gray's lucid account of this transformation in Africa."-Wyatt MacGaffey, American Historical Review "The work of a master historian and demonstrates archival detective work and scholarly analysis at its finest. Anyone interested in the introduction and development of Christianity in Africa will find this book particularly valuable."-Roger B. Beck, History: Reviews of New Books "Christianity in Africa has too often been written about by those who recognize only its sociological consequences. Gray . . . writes . . . with insights that are not found often enough in studies of black Christians and white (and black) missionaries in Africa, and this is welcome."-M. Louise Pirouet, International Journal of the African Historical Society

Author: David Wesley Ofumbi
Publisher: Xulon Press
ISBN: 161996208X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 162

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Book Description
David Ofumbi is convinced biblically that, Christian faith covers the entire realm of human existence. There is no dichotomy between private life and public life, or spiritual life and secular life, or an individual and a community. In fact, the whole of human life is the visible expression of the invisible God. Therefore, respective indigenous cultures and the gospel must engage and impact each other. On the one hand, Christians in respective indigenous cultures engage and adapt the gospel to the deep-level meaning and the surface-level forms of their cultures; on the other hand, the gospel transforms respective cultures continuously. African understanding and practices of Christian faith ("Africa Christianity") in this respect is both the outcome of the reciprocal impact between respective indigenous cultures and the gospel and the basis of authentic Christian response to human needs ("Christian Community Transformation"). In the first two chapters, he identifies and discusses briefly the challenges and hopes that characterize local communities in East Africa. He also defines and discusses the phrases "African Christianity" and "Christian Community Transformation". David particularly highlights that the impact of African understandings and practices of Christianity on "Christian Community Transformation" strive: (1) to instill self-confidence in native peoples by enabling them to recover and reassert their true human identities, to restore their true self-dignity, and to build just relationships; (2) to encourage the development and the use of local resources; (3) to bolster robust and enabling faith community structures and proactive responses compatible with the African Christian/ human ethos; and (4) to galvanize global relevance and impact. David Ofumbi is the team leader of Leadership Development Initiative Africa (Leadia), an indigenous leadership development ministry based in Kampala, Uganda. Leadia envisions a community of competent Christian leaders transforming ordinary people into effective followers of Christ courageously transforming Africa. He is currently pursuing post graduate studies focusing on the reciprocal influence between followership and leadership.